


Sanders' Secret

by ketchupcrisp



Series: (That Would Be) Enough Timestamps [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Age Play, Age Regression/De-Aging, Anxiety Attacks, Diapers, Doting Steve, Everyone Is Poly Because Avengers, F/F, F/M, Food Issues, Hand wavy science, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Infantilism, Iron Man 3 AU, Kink Negotiation, Multi, Non-Sexual Age Play, Post-Avengers (2012), Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Protective Everyone, Protective Jarvis (Iron Man movies), Shifting perspective, Slow Build, Some spoilers for Captain America: Civil War, Some spoilers for Marvel: Agents of SHIELD, Team as Family, The age-play is entirely consensual, The deaging is non-con, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony-centric, little Tony
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-10
Updated: 2017-03-10
Packaged: 2018-10-02 08:04:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10213169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ketchupcrisp/pseuds/ketchupcrisp
Summary: Even Sanders has an origin story. It's just that Natasha would prefer no one ever found out about it.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Yay, it's the first time-stamp set in my (That Would Be) Enough verse! This one takes place midway through Chapter Four, during Natasha’s first shopping trip for then de-aged Tony.
> 
> I should add that her thoughts about Build a Bear are not my own. A number of my friends work, or have worked, there and I think it’s a lovely place. It’s just not a store I can imagine Natasha having an easy time in.
> 
> Finally, content warnings for a few slightly macabre thoughts from Natasha, mostly concerning canon-typical violence, which she sometimes inappropriately compares to teddy bear shopping, because of course she does. If you need a redacted version or more information, just let me know.

There’s a secret about Sanders, one that Natasha would never tell anyone on pain of death, one that embarrasses her to even acknowledge in her own mind: his furry little body contains six cloth hearts.

She had very nearly left the store within seconds of entering it. The whole area was so unbelievably loud, in every possible way: bright fabrics, kids screaming, ridiculous music about the magic of childhood blaring in the background, it was like someone had taken every stereotype in existence about the sentimentality of Americans and distilled it into one store. The place was basically Natasha’s worst nightmare.

It was the surprise of seeing a stuffed sloth, of all animals, that had made her stop the hasty retreat she’d been beating towards the exit. She’d come in with the vague idea of getting Tony something pretty traditional, a simple bear that she figured she might (if her temper held out that long) dress in one of the Avengers t-shirts she knew were sold at places like this. And the store had those in spades. But there had been…something, something about the sloth’s huge nose and silly little grin, maybe, or the way each of its hands contained a velcro patch that would allow them to form a loop for easy carrying and cuddling. Instantly, she’d been able to see a four-year-old version of Tony Stark huddled up with the thing, telling it his secrets and allowing himself the fiction his adult self knew far better than to believe, that the animal could keep him safe through whatever dangers his dreams or the world around him could conjure.

So she’d picked the damn thing up. The unstuffed animal’s shapeless floppiness reminded her strongly of some of the more bizarre corpses she’d encountered during her work with SHIELD, but honestly thinking about that resemblance was somewhat comforting. She was so utterly out of her element that being able to reframe at least some aspect of the experience through a more familiar lens was what got her through waiting in line for the ‘stuffing machine’.

Of course, she had almost left again when she reached the front of the line, watched the beaming employee stuff the sloth, only to stop before sewing the seam in the back.

“And now it’s time for the heart ceremony!” Again this sounded…oddly familiar, but Natasha was pretty certain this twenty-something who was practically buzzing with excitement was not referring to the ritual removal and burning of organs that she had encountered during some of her stranger ops.

“I…no thanks?” she’d tried stiffly.

“Oh but your new friend needs a heart! That’s how they know they’re made out of love!” Yes. It was official. This was a very material manifestation of hell. “If you’ll just pick one from the container right there, we’ll get started!” With a wince, she’d grabbed haphazardly at the tiny cloth shapes, accidentally picking up two in her uncharacteristically awkward haste. One was a solid red, the other a muted purple tone. But rather than put the extra down as she should have done, she’d considered the clear bin for long enough that the child in line behind her let out an impatient whine. Then she’d reached in and grabbed four more, expression daring the bubbly employee or the whimpering kid to say anything. Wisely, neither had.

In the minute or so that followed, in which Natasha was forced to rub the fistful of hearts on her head (to make the sloth smart), her bicep (to give it strength), and her ‘funny bone’ (so it would always have a joke ready), she had frantically tried to get in touch with her uncooperative brain. She had considered every possible option from mind control to the store actually being some kind of portal into a hell dimension, to figure out what could possibly have possessed her to not just participate in this lunacy, but to actually take a heart for every one of Tony’s teammates. She’d even grabbed one for Thor, and he wasn’t on Earth right now!

She’d stumbled over to the ‘bathing’ area, pressing the button to blow air onto the animal and fluff its fur, in somewhat of a daze. True, she regretted what she’d initially written about Tony in her evaluation, but they were moving past that now. And it wasn’t as if he would even know about the hearts sewn inside the stuffed animal she’d given his four-year-old self once he was an adult again, let alone care, or take that ridiculous display as a meaningful indication that her opinion of him had truly changed.

But the only other option, if she hadn’t done this humiliating, saccharine thing for Tony, was that she’d somehow done it for herself. And that was even more incomprehensible. She’d never been a person to dwell on the loss of her own childhood; of all the things the Red Room had taken from her, the constructed fiction of youth as a time of innocence and freedom was not one she’d been inclined to mourn. Not in the face of so many other losses, and not in a time and place where entire regimes were crumbling before the eyes and on the backs of its people. No, it wasn’t about trying to recreate or recapture something she’d never really felt she’d had to begin with.

The best she could figure, it was that after all she had done, she was still about to make her way into Stark tower and be trusted with a young, impossibly and incomprehensibly vulnerable version of her teammate. Natasha had been counted, without hesitation or conditions, on a very short list of people deemed worthy and capable of not just knowing this child existed, but of caring for and protecting him. It was just as heavy a weight as her much larger promise to protect and shield the Earth from threats. But this prospect, and the thought of sharing that responsibility with the others, also left her almost…buoyant.

“Did you make a birth certificate for your new friend?” the man at the checkout asked, with no idea he was posing this question to one of the world’s foremost assassins, someone feared and admired and and courted by nearly every major intelligence agency. Here, for just a second, she got to be like anyone else who has ever had the privilege of going to absurd, unfathomable lengths to try to demonstrate to someone, several someones, actually, that she cared. That it mattered to be counted among them, even if she would probably never be able to tell them so outside the fluffy internal confines of a small stuffed sloth.

She did, however, make a mental note to wipe the security footage first thing in the morning. Because Natasha will be damned if Fury, or (God forbid) Clint, ever finds out about this.


End file.
